Great NV TB Race Gala & Grub

If ever there was a name for a tongue twister, that's it. Actually, my original suggestion was "GreenGecko's Gargantuan Gala for Gathered Gangs of Great Geocachers Gripped by Golly Good Grub and Girdled by Gaggles of General Goofiness."

No one else was going for it either. :-)

So all day yesterday and today, the Gang (NVGreenGecko, LostInReno, cookie&faith, and I) were emailing back and forth trying to find out what still needed to be done. One thing that did come out of this was the suggestion of declaring byjer a "Cache Bastard!" for all his truly evil caches that just make you want to... well, call him a bastard.

However, due to the realization some might not find that term all that funny, it was changed to the Disgruntled Cachers nominate byjer as the Machiavellian Cacher of the Month. Now there's a mouthfull!

Dad and I arrived early (Nicole not being able to make it due to... not my place. But it makes me wonder if we should even plan events as inevitably something bad happens). Now, you need to know this conversation:

At home -

Dad "Look what I found!"

Me "What a cute squirrel! But Bryan says he can't come over mid-week."

Leave squirrel home.

At Bully's -

Me "Look, Holly's here, wonder who else? Oh what a cool Jeep."

::looking at geocaching permit on bumper::

Me "Oh, it's a ..... SKWERL LICENSE PLATE!?! He's HERE??"

After that, it didn't matter that Geo-Jeeper's had a new cache within 400 feet, Bryan was at the event! Trouble with people like Skwerl is that they are just so awesome you just want to hang out and occastionally hit them for not being around more often.

We settled into the party room with Skwerl and Holly chatting away. Geospyder shows up and says they've been waiting in the other room ("they" of course being Jeepers). After they moved into the right room (and the loud March Madness fans moved out), there suddenly opened up a steady stream of cachers. Oy, who was all there?

Bernsports (plus kid and dad), byjer, cookie&faith and Dora, Jeepers, Spyder, my dad Trekrr, Skwerl, LostinReno, SmokeysRedheadHelper, TopDeadCenter , John from jahoadi and john, safe1, Minden Rat, Cash'n out, Nexus-Wanderer, LaughingGravy, NVGreenGecko and Drizzt Do Urden, mobiletrekker, randallh, um, um, oh, I know I'm forgetting someone...

Oh yeah - ABEYONI!

The minute Riss walked in, I think my jaw fell open; when Abe and AJ came in behind her, I know it slammed into the ground. It's been far to long since anyone has seen or heard from them, they got excited welcomes from everyone.

There were tons of coins and bugs all over the place (I think 50+ were listed on the cache page) and between byjer, John, and spyder, there were enough to make every geocoin icon hog - like me - a very happy person.

NVGreenGecko showed up late as her printer was fouling up the award. I passed it around to everyone, except byjer, and got tons of muffled laughs and lots of smiles. Looks like we weren't the only ones overly frustrated by his devious hides.

We called everyone's attention to me - Ms. Safety - standing up on a swirly chair. I thanked everyone for coming, introduced the TB Race, and began the 'ceremony' by talking about how Jerry and Jim had offered to give a tour of Pyramid to the cachers a few weeks ago. Then I turned it over to Angie. She read off the reasons for the award, getting lots of applause and cheers. She then proudly announced that Byjer was our Winner and Holly handed the award to him (and I handed over the black roses). He was grinning ear to ear and everyone was laughing.

The crowd - it really was - stayed chatting about caching for the next hour, eating good food and enjoying each others company. Towards the end, byjer tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I'd gotten the new Jeeper cache. Nope, so out I go with Abe and Riss to find it. Byjer's blasted Magellan led me to the crinder brick wall, and he just sat and laughed, before giving up and saying he was within a few feet of it. Abe made the find, just as Bernsports was wandering out.

Oh, earlier, I was talking to Mike and Cynthia when they walked in, and I asked why had that cache been on hold since February... Mike slipped up and gave me a clue that would have helped if I had had a decent Garmin in my hand... :-P

Eventually, everyone drifted out to head on their way. All in all, this was an AWESOME event and one I hope we can hold monthly with just as great of a turnout. One cacher said it best "This was fun. No affiliation, no politics, no agenda. Just cachers having fun together." (Yes, I paraphrased)

Yeah, this was a lot of fun.

Oh yeah - and I got a great shot of the racers: