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Each month a new cacher of the month will be featured here. If you would like to nominate next month's cacher Email me

March 2008 : The Blue Quasar

The Blue Quasar has been voted this month's Cacher of the Month. Lets see if we can get him to stop changing his hair colour long enough to answer some of our questions..

Q and A with The Blue Quasar

Q: Where do you call home?

A: St. Catharines is where I’ve lived for my whole Geo-life. The Niagara area has lots of great areas for caching, I’m very lucky to have the options that I do.

Q: Where does the name The Blue QUasar come from?

A: I started to collect comic books, albeit briefly, and collected Quasar comics from the Marvel universe. When I needed a new alias for the online game Acrophobia I tried to get Quasar but it was taken, so I slapped The Blue in front… and the rest is history.

Q: When you are not caching, what do you do? (work and/or relax?)

A: If people don’t know that I am really enjoying Waymarking by now, I’m gonna have to talk about it even more. Waymarking got some bad press from the start but I enjoy making the listings and researching the information. For me, it far excels what Virtuals ever were. I also play volleyball and if Luc bugs me enough I work on the OGA site. Monthly I update the home page and I take care of the Photo Contest… which is due today (oops… guess I know what I’m doing this weekend).

Q: How long have you been geocaching?

A: 6 years last November was when I joined but it took me a while to save up for the GPS. Really I logged my first find on GC2B4 – Deer Bait in early 2002. At the time I didn’t know it was the first successful cache in Ontario, it was just the closest to home LOL.

Q: How did you find out about geocaching?

A: I feel I tell this story all the time. I was watching the Discovery Channel and saw the episode that the RidgeRunners did on Geocaching. It was so cool and I knew it would get me back outdoors. I saved that cache for my 1000th find and am very happy that I did.

Q: Have you gotten anyone else involved in the sport?

A: One of the guys I work with at Canon “GeoDog” often goes out, and to a much lesser degree another guy I work with. Luc told me I should also let some opinions slip along the way here so the first one is that this is not a sport, it is a game. Games are played for fun, winning doesn’t matter. I couldn’t care less about my find count LOL.

Q: What gear do you use for caching?

A: Toyota Corolla mostly. That gets me most of the way. Then I switch to a Garmin 60Cx to finish up the rest. I was using a Toshiba Pocket PC but it died and I am back to Traditionals only until winter passes. I’m pretty low-tech, I just want to walk.

Q: Tell us some of your caching milestones. (First, most memorable etc.)

A: Well besides Deer Bait, and RidgeRunner’s Cache of Many Pins… There was the day up in Algonquin Park with Logger and Nozzletime. Algonquin is an amazing place to hike. There was also the first trip to Ohio with TrimblesTrek, The Buttons, and Amazon Annie. Can’t really talk about it much, we have rules ya know… but the event itself helped me figure out how to make my Monopoly Series. The event by Hard Oiler out in Petrolia was really interesting too. Milestones aren’t that important to me, it’s the memorable stuff that that matters.

Q: What are your favourite caches?

A: I really enjoy the Multi-Caches that take me to historical sites. Flick is the king in our area, his never disappoint. When it comes to locations, anything over 250 meters into the woods that leads to a regular sized container. I like caching that gets me to walk and see the great outdoors.

Q: What are your least favourite caches?

A: Non-container caches like Virtuals and those retched EarthCaches, they all need to die. The icon for a Virtual says it all… “We’re dead, we just don’t know it yet” LOL. And micros, especially those placed just for the heck of it. Caching should show you something of interest, not just be shoved anywhere and needing to be stealthy doesn’t appeal to me whatsoever. Quality over quantity.

Q: Any recent highlights you would like to share?

A: Being a participant in the Parks Canada weekend to create a Geocaching policy was amazing. I learned a lot and that document is now being used by Niagara Parks Commission. I’m really hoping to use this with other groups that are coming to see the value of Geocaching.

Q: Any thoughts on caching you would like to share?

A: Even though this is a fun game, remember that other people are watching your actions. Place caches that show respect to those around and always think about how it would look to the casual observer. But always try to have fun, and enjoy the game. And CITO!

Thanks to The Blue Quasar for taking time out between finding caches to share a few moments with all of us. Always looking forward to reading about your adventures.