November 2007 GGA Meeting Notes

The Savannah location for our November GGA meeting has become a tradition, and it gives those in SE Georgia a chance to join one of our meetings, and gives those who live outside the area to plan a weekend mini-vacation around a visit to Savannah.

We had nearly 70 people in attendance at the great facilities arranged by “Johann Panholtz” at the Coastal Georgia Center: 29 old members under 24 geonicks, and 31 new members under 26 geonicks. About 10% of those attending had “Panholtz” as their last name, and they got to see John do a great job as our host and MC.

John welcomed the group, provided some excellent “geo-tips”, and reminded the group that their attendance made them members of the Georgia Geocachers Association, and that two of the six Steering Committee positions would be open for election this month. Participants were also instructed to refer to the GGA discussion forums for more information.

John introduced our guest speaker, Diana Churchill, author of “A Feathered Who’s Who in Coastal Georgia”. Diana is an authority on area birds, and regularly writes a column on the subject for the local paper. She gave an interesting talk about the birds to be found in the area, some seasonally, some year around. Her talk was illustrated with a slide show and accompanying recordings of bird chirps, tweets, honks, and songs in an interesting and fun guessing-game format. We had a suspected ringer or two in the audience, as some knew more about our fine feathered friends than would reasonably be expected from someone with a GPS rather than binoculars. It was all a lot of fun, and very informative.

On a more serious note, before adjourning for games, John asked all those were active military or military veterans to stand and receive a round of applause in recognition of the upcoming Veteran’s Day.

Three games had been set up by John to hone skills and amuse the geocachers: The first involved measuring the perimeter of the building using a GPS, the second finding the coords of a temporary benchmark he’d placed, and the last illustrated an offshoot of geocaching called “Shutterspotting” http://www.gpsgames.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&wrap=Shutterspot
as we attempted to find the spots from where he’d taken six photos.

It was a lot of fun, and as most geocachers broke into small groups it provided a great way to get to know other geocachers and work together to solve the problems.

The winners of the three contests were each awarded an ammobox with all the contents needed to place a cache. Then all present at the meeting participated in a drawing for many other fine donated items.

A lot of fun was had by all, and we can’t wait for our next GGA meeting in Savannah. The logs of those who attended, and a gallery of pictures, can be viewed on the event cache page: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=...90631&log=y&decrypt=

Our next event will be another traditional one: Our December brunch and social. No structured meeting in December, just eating and camaraderie. Please join us:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=...5c-9cbe-f883f298d451