NWOG's Summer Featured Cachers are shroomAzoom, Jenn and DNF. It feels a little odd writing an introduction for ourselves, so we'll let the questions introduce us instead. PS: We started caching in October 2005. (September 2009)

1. How did you get your geocaching alias?

   shroomAzoom: Well, I've gone by "Shroom" since grade nine when I had what was considered quite the avant guard haircut (until I could grow it out.) Throughout my life since then, many people have only known me as "Shroom." To soften the edge of the nickname I added the "-azoom" to it about ten years ago.

   Jenn: That's pretty straight forward.

   DNF: He really looks up to RagBag, so he took the whole "use my initials to make up a cool monicker" thing and came up with his very witty geocaching name. When DNF starts going caching with his grandparents (give it a year at the most) he plans on setting up his own geocaching account to keep track of his finds.

2. What do you do when you're not geocaching?

   Darren does web and graphic design as part of the curriculum design team at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and Jenn works as an Interior Designer at a local architectural office, but she's taking the next year off to be with Nathan. We enjoy cooking (and eating,) going on road trips and spending time with our families who fortunately are both into geocaching too. We are both involved at our church, Darren sometimes plays drums or bass in the worship band and Jenn sometimes sings and we help out with the youth program. Jenn likes crafts (sewing, crochet,) baking, watching movies and writing lists. Darren likes fooling around on the computer and playing all sorts of games (especially board games.)

3. When and how did you get started geocaching?

   When we moved to Thunder Bay in the summer of 2005, my father-in-law asked me to teach him how to use his GPSr. I took it home for a few days to play with and found out about geocaching while googling GPS games. I think I had read about geocaching before, but hadn't been able to try it. My first cache was Bora Laskin at LU, though I had tried the now retired Field House cache first, but was unsucessful. I soon discovered that Gimpstick and D_and_S were geocachers who worked in the same building as I at LU. So, it was neat to have other geocacher friends right away. As soon as I found my first cache, I was hooked and wanted to start hiding them too, but decided it would be good to find at least a dozen before I hid my first one.

   I first recruited Jenn to help me find one of the Dread Pirate Roberts caches. She made the find after I cracked the code. I think she liked it right away too. During our first couple years cacheing together we would often race each other to find the caches, but now we're much more collaborative.

4. What do you like most about geocaching?

   Jenn likes that she gets exercise and sees places that she never would have before. I like that too. I also like the treasure hunt aspect of the sport. I've always liked maps and puzzles and mysteries and geocaching lets me play at that as an adult. I also like games, so organizing things like the cache challenges and GeoMonopoly are enjoyable for me.

5. Do you have any geocaching pet-peeves?

   Jenn doesn't like tiny little caches hidden in forests. I don't like magnetic caches on trains, like Railroad Queen in Kenora which I've been to four or five times and still can't find. :)

   Mostly what we don't like are needle-in-a-haystack type caches that aren't meant to be found. I like a cache that makes me search, perhaps for fifteen or twenty minutes, but are findable. I think there's a place for really difficult hides, but not every cache has to be like that.
   Oh, and even though I'm not the best at tree identification, I dislike clues that talk about "pine trees" when there are nothing but spruce and balsam around. :)

6. What do you take with you when you go caching?

   We take our GPSr (Garmin GPSMap60CSx) and almost always a writing utensil. Sometimes we take snacks, water (if we're on a good hike or a long day of caching,) our camera, and toilet paper (you never know.) :)

7. Have you introduced anyone to geocaching?

   Yeah a few. Some have sticked with it, others, not so much. You might recognize Poohma (took them caching at camp on July 1, 2006,) the Pepsis, JungleBus, DNF. I also like to think that we re-introduced WanderingMan to it, even though, he had a cache and a few finds from a few years before we started caching together.

8. Which other geocacher has influenced/stands out to you the most?

   So many of you have influenced us. My first influence would have been Gimpstick through his DPR series. Ragbag was the first guy I thought of as a super cache (because he had so many hides and finds when I was a green cacher.) Hunter and Killer, not only because they can find ANY cache hidden and usually can do it before anyone else, but because they are so witty and funny in their logs. Even those Winnipeg caches really stand out to me. We cache in Winnipeg every summer and have made friends with the likes of GrnBrg, OHMIC, ERTYU and Turdleggs. There are a lot of great folks involved in geocaching and I'm sure each find of theirs we've made has influenced us in some way.

9. What is the most interesting place geocaching has taken you?

   There is a cave in Dryden that was really cool. Assiniboine park (re-introduced us to that place.) We cached the Freedom Trail when we were in Boston and that took us to a lot of neat places and historic cemeteries.

10. What has been you most memorable geocaching find (or DNF?)

    Nurse Duncan's First (our first attempt) was a very memorable DNF, especially for Jenn. We were still pretty new to caching and didn't know that we should read the logs to get an idea of what we were getting ourselves into. (I still don't really know that I should do that.) We started hiking for that one from the chalet of the old ski hill. We wandered way up the mountain (towards the wrong coords) and then started bushwacking a kilometre or so into thick little sapplings. Jenn caught a branch in the eye that flicked out a contact lens and another the pulled out an earring. Of course, we didn't get to the cache. We got close to the posted coodinates though (only 15m away) but we were on top of a big cliff, so we had no chance of getting that one.

    As far as caches that we have found that are very memorable, we really like Marathon Man, a cache in Boston that inspired John and John, Loopy, Caver's old Highway. Lots and lots. We really like non-standard containers.

11. Which of your hides are you the most pleased with?

    We liked This is Not the Cache You're Looking For, Now You See It... and our Boat Island Caches on Eagle Lake, because they're on a big island that has a lake on the island. They're remote, but a cool hike.

12. What is your closest un-found cache?

    Little Green Men?!?! 2.9km away.

13. What caches do you have in your sights right now?

    I'd love to do A Superior Cache, but probably will hit the Escape Road series next (after finishing off most of the Lappe caches today.)

14. Hunter-Killer: Is this [the NWOGeocachers website] a home based server, with monthly fees, or is it a hosted domain with limited band width? Or is it based out of L.U's servers? Seems some templated script is being used, but that's not a bad thing.

    Before the was the NWOG website there was the Yahoo! group for Thunder Bay geocachers. Mechman started that up circa 2006 as a free and easy way for us to organize ourselves and chat about geocaching. It was really the thing that got me going with this website. Unfortunately the Yahoo! group didn't catch on. It wasn't for a lack of interest, it was just limited in what it could do.

    I do website stuff for my job and have been making websites since before Mosaic. I was fooling around with two separate systems, a CMS and this Forum software, in the spring of 2008 and thought that they would work together well to host a local geocaching website. I could see from the beginning, that the heart of the site was the forums and the NWOG site is really my first foray into web-based forums (I was on BBSs and usenet way back in the day, so I'm not new to the concept.) This spring/summer it became apparent that the forum software (Simple Machines Forum, a freeware (but not freely re-distributable or OpenSource) internet forum application) had enough modifications available that it could take over the CMS side of things and add functionality, so we made the switch.

    I own the domain name and host the site on my on hosting space which I host a few other websites off of as well.

15. csooley: You have stumped many of us over the years with your geocaches (John & John, Now you See it, and more recently TB Hydro, and City Hall). Are they any that have stumped you (other than Jim's micros) and/or impressed you with their ingenuity? Either locally or globally.

    Nope, not us. We find everything we look for. :) Yeah, there have been a number of really great caches that we've found over the years. I think one of our favourites was GUE Magic Scroll in Winnipeg. It is a puzzle cache that we tried to find with the Poohmas in the summer of 2007. The coordinates took us to the middle of an open square of paving stones at the university. We searched (and there was really no where to search) for a long time before we gave up. On the drive back to camp on Eagle Lake, Mr. Poohma (if I remember correctly) cracked the super hard hint code and because I played a certain text based adventure game on the Commodore 64 in my youth, I immediately knew where we had to look to find the cache. We weren't going to be back to Winnipeg for another year, but when we did, we found the cache. Quite satisfying.

    Then there's Friends of the Forest. It's a kid's puzzle cache, but it's totally beyond me and Jenn won't let me go back for it. :)

16. Mechman: I'd love to know what your caching plans are now that you have a miniShroom. How is it going to affect your caching? Or more relevant - how do you "think" it is going to affect your caching?

    Yeah, that's a loaded question, Mech. :) I'm patiently waiting until DNF can hold his head up on his own, so I can cary him around in one of those baby-backpacks. Then, I'm hoping he'll sleep a lot and let me wander around the bush with him. Fortunately, he has a grandmother or two who would rather babysit that go caching. Well, I'm hoping on that last one too. :)

Thanks guys for nominating us all as the NWOG Summer 2009 Featured Cachers. We really enjoyed caching together and caching with all of you!