Northern Virginia Geocaching Organization

Tell us about your caching name. I took my caching name from a beautiful wildlife preserve in Loudoun County that I have visited as a birder for years and where I volunteer from time to time. Here is a description of the names Origin: In the early part of the 19th Century, the owner of the farm now called Banshee Reeks was said to be of Irish/Scottish descent. In the Gaelic language, banshee is a female spirit and reeks refers to hills and dales. The story goes that one night the farmer went into the town of Leesburg to attend to personal business and also paid a visit to the local saloon. Upon arriving back at his farm very late at night, with the wind howling and the night animals making their noises, the farmer was in such a state of mind, that he claimed he heard a banshee on … Continue reading →

Tell us about your caching name. First- “Zygote2k”. Around 1999 when everyone was freaking out about the millennium, I heard a Chinese fable about when the 1000 year egg hatches; the world will undergo great changes. At that time my life was undergoing a great deal of changes so I adopted it for my email and caching name. Tell us how you started caching/how were you introduced to caching. In 2003, my new girlfriend- Hayseed 40 was interested in mapping and GIS so I bought her a Garmin etrex Venture for Christmas. During my search for information on GPS, I ran across the geocaching website. 3 days after Christmas, we found our first cache- “Signal Knob”. Tell us about your GPS receiver. I originally had a Garmin etrex Vista, but the click stick broke after 2 years. I took it apart to fix it and realized that was beyond my … Continue reading →

Tell us about your caching name. Rinauldi is a nickname that I was given in Jr. High School. There isn’t much of a story behind it, but here it is anyway. One of my closest friends had parents who did a lot of international travel. His mom was from France and his father from Rio and they had family spread everywhere. Of course, has was often brought along. For some reason I reminded him of someone he knew from his travels named Renalto, but he thought Rinauldi sounded cooler and started calling me that. I couldn’t walk down the hall at school without hearing “HEY RinnnnnAAAAALDI!” It stuck. College was no escape as we both went to the same school and pledged the same fraternity. I guess at some point I embraced it and made it my own. I came with me into the early days of computer BBS’s because … Continue reading →