October 2007 GGA Challenge Event Meeting Notes


In place of our regular monthly meeting, in October the GGA held it’s annual “GGA Challenge Event”. The event was held October 13th at the Dauset Trails Nature Center near Jackson, Georgia. The 13th proved to be a lucky day for many of the participants, but before describing the event we need to acknowledge and thank those who made it all possible.

First: Ike English, of the Dauset Trails Nature Center for allowing us to use the facility. Ike could not join us that day, but we’re sure he would have enjoyed seeing families experience the facility not only for the GGA Challenge, but also for the many amenities available there. This is not the first time we’ve had our Challenge Event at Dauset Trails, and hopefully it won’t be the last. Thanks Ike!

Second: Ed “Rebel” Handler for coordinating with Ike to use the facility, orchestrating much of the behind the scenes work, and acting as our Master of Ceremonies.

Third: We had two committees, or “Teams”, who did all the work before, during, and after the event to ensure that a good time was had by all the 81 participants on that beautiful day.

Support Team:
The most visible element of the support team’s activities was the great lunch they provided, but they also made geocoins and t-shirts available for purchase, handled the registration of the challenge participants, loaded coords into their GPS receivers, and checked in those returning from their cache hunts. There are no doubt other critical behind the scenes jobs these folks did, but since they did them so well nothing was lacking to be noticed. (Well... there was one problem experienced by those using the restrooms and not aware that the lights were on timers set by the person who preceded them. But we really can’t blame the support team for leaving us in the dark with our pants down, can we?)
The team was ably lead by the pair of ParentsofSAM, and supported by Mertat, Professor Shorthair, Joebids, CharmedOne3, and mtn.man. Thanks to you all!

Hiding Team (that’s a polite term for this group):
These are the fine (?) folks who created and hid the cache containers, some of which the rest of us were actually able to find. The team was ably led by Rebel, who coordinated which hider would hide his caches in which particular area, provided maps of the area, and generally made sure we all had sufficient time to find seven caches without a minute to spare. The other evil hiders in the group were Jason (of ParentsofSAM), Tarvol, Phat.bak, Papageorgia, Maviman, and Goober6565. We won’t single out any particular hider (oink, oink) as they all did a great job of showcasing their art. There wasn’t a lame skirt lifter among them. Well, there was one skirt lifter, but that was provided by the support team and hidden in the pavilion, so it doesn’t count unless you were the little boy who kept returning to it for another candy.

There were 67 existing GGA members signing in under 57 geonicks, and 7 new members signing in under 4 geonicks. There were a total of 81 participants counted, so some of the old GGA members were apparently too senile to remember to check their name off the list. Individual members, or teams sharing a GPS, comprised the 49 teams that left after lunch on a shotgun start to spend up to three hours looking for the caches they had drawn at random. The caches contained sealed envelopes with individual playing cards. The object was to find up to seven caches, then make the best possible poker hand with five of the seven cards. Some people went out on their own, some joined up into small teams and found more than their seven so they’d have help from someone else who did likewise.

The cache hunt, as well as the events before and after the hunt, was filmed by a crew from Georgia Public Television for the “Georgia Outdoors” program. They apparently had a tough time keeping up with Bushbob and his family as they reportedly bailed out after the first few finds to return to the pavilion. They should have gotten some great footage though.

The intrepid cache hunters returned by 4pm to have their envelopes opened and checked off. This was followed by a game of “who has the highest hand.”

Player number 44 had four “4”s, and JMTBuzz’s four of a kind was the winning hand. His prize was a Garmin eTrex Legend HCx. Then there was a flush or a straight, a couple of full houses, three of a kinds, and on down. Even many with only one “high card” got a prize, thanks to the many goodies contributed by members to supplementing those purchased by the GGA from funds collected throughout the year.

Even those who didn’t win a prize earned a “smilie” for attending, and had a great time.

You can read the logs of those who attended, and see the gallery of pictures at this link:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=...ab-bfb2-acac3920bc54
(note: you’ll need to be logged into geocaching.com to view the page after it is archived)

If you missed this event you missed a great one, and we hope you can join us at our November event. In addition to an annual challenge event, our annual Savannah GGA Meeting has become somewhat of a tradition. That event will be held November 10th, and we hope you’ll make the trip. Savannah has much to offer, and many Atlanta area geocachers are making plans to spend the night to make the most of their visit.
See you there!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ~erik~,

quote:

. . . the 48 teams . . .their seven so they’d have help from someone else who did likewise.

Nicely written! Two things:

There were 49 teams (as I recall), one more than I planned on but we slipped the cacher in.

Some folks grabbed all the cards from caches but the verification check-in caught the extras and gave them to folks who came upon empty caches. It all worked out in the end. There were a couple of more issues which I will address in an after action report when I get time to write it.

Thanks Ed. I edited the team count.

~erik~