Los Tiburones Electricos GeoWiki

=The Team=
 * rhouston
 * mexicansunrise
 * La Guera
 * Rufinho

=History= My interest in geocaching developed from a desire to get back to the fun of hiking I remember from my Boy Scout past. I'd recently stopped playing soccer after 27 years of injuries were starting to catch up with me. I wanted to get my hiking exercise at lunchtime so I started thinking about where I could hike around my workplace. I quickly set myself a project to hike from my place of work to a park that was about 3 miles away. There wasn't an obvious hiking route between the two places and the project was to find a route that stayed on trails and off streets as much as possible. I made myself a web page to keep track of this project here. This project got me thinking that I needed a GPSr, so I started shopping. I had expected them to be very expensive, but I ended up getting a Garmin Geko 201 off Ebay for about $40. Once I had the device my enthusiasm for this hiking project waned but my interest in geocaching took off. When I first started the game I gave all the different cache types a shot. Quickly I learned that I didn't care much for micros, multis, or puzzles. (I gather that that's a common opinion among rookies.) As I get closer to 100 caches I'm warming slightly to micros and puzzles, but still don't care for multis. I don't have much opportunity to travel, so almost all of my caching is done near my home (Cedar Park, TX) and work. (Austin, TX) My team only comes together occasionally so most of the time I'm on my own. I'm not a complete newbie anymore but neither am I a super-experienced cacher. I tend to like ammo boxes that require a bit of hiking to get to. --rhouston

First Find
'''YAPIDKA: Kay Redden's Boulevard? (GC12FJ6)''' - The date is September 22, 2007. I had just received my now beloved Geko 201 in the mail and was looking for a good test run. I scoured the website and came up with this one. It was close to my house and in a small wooded clump in an otherwise developed neighborhood park. I remember having this idea that actually finding a cache was going to be extraordinarily difficult and so my expectations were not high. May daughter was 2 at the time and came along with me. We found the area pretty quickly and was impressed that it was the entrance to a cave reserve. I now know that these cave reserves are all over this area but at the time it was a new discovery. It had also not occurred to me that cache hiders would use their hides to highlight all kinds of interesting things. I failed at first to find the treasure and went back to my car to decode the hint. I have rarely since decoded a hint manually in the field, but I did that day, and as luck would have it the hint was only three letters long: "ybt". "log" Thus armed with a very helpful hint I returned to claim my glory. I was pretty stunned to have any success at all that day. Needless to say I got incredibly pumped up and went on to find 5 more that day in various locations, including one of my all-time favorites, Chicken Cooop (GCT4FC).

Arch-Nemesis
Only a few days later I attempted to find Cypress Creep III - The other side (GCYG98). I was still flush with my initial successes and probably didn't even know the definition of "DNF". This was probably my cruel introduction to the fact that micros in natural settings are, um, not my cup of tea. I didn't find it that first day I looked for it and I've never found it despite looking for it at least 5 or 6 times. I just have some mental block. I watch the log and others seem to have no problem. Nowadays most of my pocket queries exclude micros. But I have to live with the shame of knowing that Cypress Creep III is a mere 4 blocks from my house and it remains unfound.

Night Caching
I haven't done much night caching but the few experiences that I've had have always been memorable. Over Christmas vacation of 2007 I took my visiting nephew out to find the laser greatness of Night Light (GC14231). It so completely blew our minds that we drove back home and loaded the rest of the family into the car to go see it. Thus introduced to night caching we searched for others in the Austin area and found Roman Nights (GCZ1KY). The night after Christmas another family group set out but was defeated. (Depressing log entry here). We actually tried again a few days later and failed again. Instead of continuing to bang our heads against the wall we took some time off, and before we knew it a year had passed and it was Christmas again. This time it was actually Christmas night of 2008 when we attempted it again. Our year to stew on our past mistakes paid off big time. We ran like a well oiled machine and got our reward. (Triumphant log entry here). I don't think I've ever felt more satisfaction in finding a cache than I did when I found this one..

=Hides= Los Tiburones Eléctricos have a hide to their name: (GC18G7F).

=Links=
 * geocaching.com - "The" site
 * GeoLex - The Lexicon of Geocaching - Where I find the definition of all those pesky acronyms
 * Geocacher's Creed - Interesting read
 * It's Not About The Numbers - A nice geocaching stats site
 * Garmin Geko 201 Manual - The preferred hardware of Los Tibruones
 * TinyGPX - A little utility written by yours truly to facilitate "less paper" caching by printing out cache info in super-compact form
 * maps-gps-info.com - A great site that lists all the free GPS software out there
 * waymarking.com - I can't decide if I like waymarking or not
 * GPSBabel - My GPS software of choice
 * EasyGPS - My other GPS software of choice (along with Google Maps)