During his senior year in high school Herb joined the Naval Reserve. After graduation he went to Boot Camp and Class "A" Radioman School at the Naval Training Center in San Diego. He was stationed at Cubi Point, Subic Bay, Philippines, NAS Agana, Guam Island and on the destroyer escort the USS Walton. While in Viet Nam on the Walton he made Radioman First Class. When he got off active duty he returned to the Reserves and made Chief Radioman. Shortly after getting off active duty he became very interested in bicycle touring and racing and was heavy into the sport for about 17 years. Herb was employed in the electronics industry and retired in 2002. His hobbies are playing with his iMac computer, photography, following professional bicycle racing, listening to his police/fire scanner and helping his wife Nicole.
Nicole has spent the last 13 years teaching fourth grade at a local school. She has many fond memories of her time there. She has started an after school homework program for her students which has expanded to include students in other grades as well. She spent three years working with the sixth grade teacher to edit the school's yearbook. Nicole also spent 8 years leading the First Reconcilation class until the sacramental program was moved to second grade. She has had fun participating in NASA's Jason Project creating rainforests and learning about Hawaii's newest volcano which we were lucky enough to check out last year when her sister gave us a gift of a trip to Hawaii. She worked on a grant which resulted in the school receiving several new computers - G3's - and supportive equipment. She was very surpised to have been nominated for the American Teacher's Award two years ago. Her classroom has been home to turtles, frogs, mice and lizards. The menagerie all started with her pet three- toe boxed turtle, Igor, who became a part of our lives the year she started teaching. He currently rules the roost at home adopting strange behaviors such as planting himself in front of the kitchen and not moving until he is fed.
Currently our big insterest and activity is the sport of geocaching. If you are not familiar with geocaching just think treasure hunt using global positioning satellites. The geocacher uses a GPS receiver which can receive up to fourteen GPS satellites at one time. The receiver can place you witin about 14 feet of any location on earth. The idea of the sport is to go to geocaching.com and find the geocaches in the geographical area you wish to hunt in. You take this information and enter the coordinates into the receiver which then shows you the way to the loaction of the treasure, or cache as it is called. You might find just a very small cache where you only sign a long. However, many are large enough to hold all types of things and the idea is to take on and replace it with something you leave. There are also what are called Travel Bugs. You may take a travel bug but only if you agree to place it in another 'cache .' Each Bug has a tag that looks somewhat like a military ID tag and on that tag is a serial number. You again go to geocaching.com and look up that registration number which will tell you the history of the Travel Bug. You log your find and later log where you have put it. As for myself (Herb) I love TB's and as of 11 April 2005 I have put out 20 of them. Some have made their way to Finland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Hawaii and in many locations across the USA. You can purchase a GPS receiver for as little as $99.00....Go for it as geocaching is a great activity that takes you to new places you never knew existed even near your home.
